When leaving the city of Altai, you have two choices. You can ride north to Uliastai, which is called the central route, or you can ride east, and stay south. The latter is called the Southern road. The central road gives you more mountain scenery. The Southern road goes through the steppe. You will still be at 2000m. It will also be asphalted.

With our problem we choose the safest route and kept going on the Southern. We have seen a lot of mountains in the Pamir, Kyrgyzstan, Altai, so we didn’t mind. Personally I like the vastness of the mountainous steppe. There was a nice bonus to start the day, a stretch of about 100km asphalt. Under the way we stopped to see some hilltop monument. It had swastikas all over the place. We think this is related to buddhism but we have to find out what it means exactly.

After the asphalt stretch we were separated by about 5km from our gps route, which was the old Southern route. Now we had a choice, go back to this safe gps route, or keep following the more mountainous path.

Lárisa is quite adventurous. She spoke to a shamaan we met in Altai, and he told us about a new road through the mountains. So we took the new route. It was a bit risky, because there was almost no traffic on this road. I think we met 4 people on that road. But it was sure beautiful and difficult. We had a lot of soft sand, and some points Lárisa had to push me and the bike out of it! The worn heidenaus were not much help here.

We kept drifting away from the old route and soon it was long gone and we were alone in the mountains. The landscapes changed after every hill crest. Altough we had no rear suspension, it was an amazing ride. To lighten the load on the rear spring I stood up most of the time. My eyes almost fell out when we saw a big truck on this road. He had problems with one of his 22 tyres.

After a few valleys and 200km we reached the small town of Buutsagaan. There was the most amazing weather hanging in the air at the time. We bought some provisions and left the town. I looked at my gps when sunset would be and noted we had shifted yet into another timezone. I kept an eye open for a good camping spot.

We were climbing up a small mountain just above 2000m. I wanted to ride over the hill crest and saw an amazing view. Voila, the perfect spot for another clandestine bivak. We were not seen from the road. Just below the hilltop and out of the view. The view was unpayable.

We set up camp, had a good dinner with bread, fish, and pasta. I climbed to the top to watch the sun go down. My phone was lying with Lárisa when Peter Dhaese, my BMW dealer called. I ran down quickly and he told me he was looking for my part. There had a been a delay as the breakdown happened on Sunday and workshops only open on Tuesday, and there is the 6 hour time difference as well.

I was assured now it would be OK. It was getting dark and cold as well on this mountain. We went in the tent and did some reading. We went to sleep. All of a sudden my phone ran again. It was Peter, now he told me BMW had approved the warranty claim and they would send a new spring to my dealer. What a great news to end the day! I was doing a little dance inside the tent. It was cold but we were both very happy 🙂